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Plants and Animals Race for Survival as Climate Change Creeps Across the Globe
Lowland tropics, mangroves and deserts at greater risk than mountainous areas as global warming spreads, study finds
Global warming creeps across the world at a speed of a quarter of a mile each year, according to a new study that highlights the problems that rising temperatures pose to plants and animals. Species that can tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures will need to move as quickly if they are to survive. Wildlife in lowland tropics, mangroves and desert areas are at greater risk than species in mountainous areas, the study suggests.
Mangroves are some of the areas most vulnerable to climate change, as a new study by the Carnegie Instuttion in California reveals the rapid movement of global warming across the world. (Photograph: Corbis) "These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place," said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution in the US, who worked on the project. "Expressed as velocities, climate change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals."
The study, by scientists at the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined information on current and projected future climate to calculate a "temperature velocity" for different parts of the world.
They found that mountainous areas will have the lowest velocity of temperature change, meaning that animals will not need to move very far to stay in the temperature range of their natural habitat. However, much larger geographic displacements are required in flatter areas such as flooded grasslands, mangroves and deserts, in order for animals to keep pace with their climate zone. The researchers also found that most currently protected areas are not big enough to accommodate the displacements required.
Healy Hamilton, director of the centre for applied biodiversity informatics at the California Academy of Sciences, said: "One of the most powerful aspects of this data is that it allows us to evaluate how our current protected area network will perform as we attempt to conserve biodiversity in the face of global climate change."
He added: "When we look at residence times for protected areas, which we define as the amount of time it will take current climate conditions to move across and out of a given protected area, only 8% of our current protected areas have residence times of more than 100 years. If we want to improve these numbers, we need to both reduce our carbon emissions and work quickly towards expanding and connecting our global network of protected areas."
The study found that global warming would have the lowest velocities in tropical and subtropical coniferous forests, where it would move at about 80 metres a year, and montane grasslands and shrublands - a biome with grass and shrubs at high elevations - with a projected velocity of about 110 metres each year.
Global warming is expected to sweep more quickly across flatter areas, such as mangrove swamps and flooded grasslands and savannas, where it could have velocities above 1km a year. Across the world, the average velocity is 420 metres each year. The results are published in the journal Nature.
Wildlife in areas with low projected climate change velocities are not necessarily better protected, the scientists point out. Habitats such as broadleaf forests are often small and fragmented, which makes it harder for species to move.
The study examines the movement of climate zones, not species, the scientists stress, which means it is difficult to predict what the impacts may be on individual trees, insects and animals. Some are more tolerant to changing temperature than others, and the movement of species can be difficult to track. While trees are estimated to have spread northwards through a warming Europe after the end of the last ice age at a speed of about 1km per year, this could be down to dormant seeds reseeding the landscape, which would not be possible if species are forced to shift to new territories.
The scientists say that global warming will cause temperatures to change so rapidly that almost a third of the globe could see climate velocities higher than even the most optimistic estimates of plant migration speeds.
Some plants and animals may have to be physically moved by humans to help them cope, the scientists say, while protected areas must also be enlarged and joined together.
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26 Comments so far
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The megacrisis is a web of complex interactions. Here's one example: in many ecosystems, the loss of one or two keystone species will lead to the collapse of the entire ecosystem. With the high temperature change velocity in flatter areas we're going to have ecosystem collapses and corresponding extinctions.
Some speak of Earth's natural cycles, warm periods alternating with cold, and they are right to a point. This article illustrates the problem in their argument; speed of change.
The mangroves pictured act as shore protection, like an organic rip rap to soften the blow of waves. If the mangroves get drowned great areas of coastal shoreline can be washed away.
Most plants can not keep pace. Perhaps we will have to start plant zoos.
"Perhaps we will have to start plant zoos."
Good point. The thing is, there already are "plant zoos." (They might be better termed 'botanoos' to highlight the change from zoology to botany: I rather like the way that word sounds, don't you?) These are the "protected areas" that the article references: we've got 'em, but we need more space for them--even if climate change weren't happening right now.
Perhaps the biggest problem aside from the small sizes of these areas (and the impact that has on genetic diversity) is the crucial lack of interconnectedness between them. Biomes need to interact with each other: indeed, it is the areas of exchange where the very definition of a biome is crafted. Within these margin areas, a set of biomes is able to shift as conditions change, often allowing them all to survive through time. For example: the aquatic species that evolved in places that are now land-locked would never have survived had they not had contiguous access to the areas where they now persist.
We need "botanoos," but we need them to stay connected to each other, or they will all likely eventually fail. Sure, it's easier to manually cross-pollinate plants than it is to get a couple of pandas to do the deed, but it's much easier still to let nature handle the task if we construct such protected biome networks intelligently.
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If you don't ask yourself why, you know nothing.
Botanoos, I like it. The Shawnee National Forest has been my home base for many years. Places like the Larue Pine Hills are some of the most biologically diverse in the midwest. The forest has been fragmented, as you say, and the prairie to the north is now corn. Plant migration doesn't have a chance.
I don't take to the "plant zoos" terminology, because zoos generally have not been about conservation. They're usually about business and pleasing visitors who go there not because they care about conservation of wildlife, but for merely wanting to see wildlife up close when they'd otherwise have to travel to the natural areas the animals are from and which is where they should be conserved, which'd require conserving their natural habitat, which Big Business doesn't want to do because it'd "cut into profits".
However, what you're talking about do exist, I believe, and I think they're usually called "botanical gardens", which is a fine name and one I'd stick with using, if it is what plant conservation places created by people, organisations and governments, are called. I know "botanical gardens" exist and have visited two fine ones, but am not sure if there isn't another kind that's specifically used for botanical conservation.
Botanical gardens are just like zoos; exotic species displayed for public enjoyment. The point here is propagation centers to aid species survival. What they are called matters not.
Silent Running was a prescient book.
Bill Gates has already started a seed diversity bank in Norway. Obviously he is thinking that something is coming down the pike that is going to kill off species. I am certain that he will not use his position to monopolize plant life in the future. That would be wrong.
Joe
Oh absolutely! Bill Gates would never use his position to establish a monopoly. Just like Microsoft he is open to fair competition and would never take unfair advantage of others. Ha, ha, just kidding...
He didn't start the seed bank, but he is one of the investors in what some people call the "Doomsday Seed Vault". He and his wife, through their foundation, are investors, along with "the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway," and others (from the Dec. 4, 2007, article, below). It's officially called the "Svalbard Global Seed Vault" and some people refer to it as a "seed bank", as opposed to "seed vault". And the Rockefeller Foundation has had a "racialist eugenics agenda since the 1920’s", according to the 2008 article.
"NATO’s Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic
Using "Climate Change" as a Pretext to Appropriate World Seeds' Treasure"
by F. William Engdahl, Sep 22, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10300
""Doomsday Seed Vault" in the Arctic
Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t"
by F. William Engdahl, Dec 4, 2007
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529
There are other articles about this at GR and they're easy to find by using the Advanced Google Web search, or by adding "site:globalresearch.ca" to the search terms in the simple Google search page.
F. William Engdahl is certainly an author to pay attention to.
I just did a video search to see if there are any videos about this and there are plenty, but unfortunately didn't find one with F. William Engdahl. There are some at Youtube for which the text seems to say that the Club of Rome is also involved and I've read a little about this organisation before; believing to recall that it's not good.
However, we should be somewhat alarmed with learning that involved in this are Monsanto and Syngenta, these GMO seed producers and pushers using governments to try to impose use of GMO seeds on farmers and, therefore, consumers in general. Seeds shouldn't be gmo'd like these cies do it, only natural hybridization should be permitted; and making it worse is that the seeds are also patented, which means that there are corporate rights that are very strictly enforced by governments for these corporations to profit.
And the eugenics history of the Rockefeller Foundation and Bill Gates certainly being a monopolist and globalist should add to the alarms that should ring in our heads or minds.
It's good to have a seed vault, but I'd prefer to see it owned by all of humanity, like through the UN, f.e. I am definitely not pleased about the aforementioned investors in this project.
"... unless those days were cut short, no flesh would be saved..." matt. 24:22
Can anyone deny that making the connection between our actions and their effects on ALL LIVING THINGS, is vital to our health and the planet's health?
1 1/2 Million wild animals are killed every year to protect cattle.
We kill one animal to protect another animal to kill another animal.
51% climate change is a direct result of livestock products.
Check it out: www.worldwatch.org/ww/livestock
Substituting healthy alternatives in place of animal products benefits our health and the planet's health.
Where is the point about over population of the human species in this article? No one ever wants to touch that subject.
God, if I hear one more time we have to reduce carbon emissions and NO concurrent discussion of reducing human population I'm going to scream.
Just imagine where we'd be as a planet if there weren't 7 billion human beings and counting destroying habitats and ecosystems? The only reason carbon emissions are reaching dangerous atmospheric levels isn't because of elephants or elk. It's because of the profligate, greedy, wasteful human being.
So let's not forget: ZERO POPULATION GROWTH for the human being. Reducing the population of the species H. sapiens just might render Earth capable of retaining the biodiversity that keeps everything alive, including us.
The planet can support 7 billion humans if lifestyles change.
Balancing, zero population growth is a reasonable request.
Reducing it might happen naturally.
Buck, agreed. Think: 7 billion Amish....
Jeevee
VERY GOOD POINT! But humans, en masse, seem to be too drowned in deceit and ego bloating to WAKE UP to this
gravest threat to all of us.
The suggestion that plants and animals will succesfully migrate and that humans can help them seems like a grotesque misunderstanding of the evolutionary process. Species are adapted to live in their own particular niche, in a balance that developed over eons, with their predators, their source of food and nourishment, the soil, their shelter. You'd have to move all that along with them. The whole notion smacks of desperation.
It also completely ignores the effects of the "other' greenhouse gases from fossil and biofuel emissions, the sulfites and nitrates and volatile organic compounds that form ozone and other toxins including acid rain. These are causing the epidemics of asthma, emphysema and cancer and they are also killing vegetation at a breathtaking pace. Where I live, on the East Coast of the US, trees are uniformly in irreversible decline and this past summer saw damage on annual foliage leading to crop failure.
It would be nice if we could stop burning fuels before there aren't even any more viable seeds left.
Photos and inks to scientific research here: www.witsendnj.blogspot.com
excellent point, and one of my pet peeves...we keep discussing climate as if the only changes of consequence we may be encountering in the future are temperature related...
very little is said about our current, ongoing alteration of the molecular structure of our world...the barrage of chemicals we spew everywhere, every day...
so many of our published future concerns exhibit an underlying confidence that the basic structures of our world, the chemical, atomic structures, will remain as they have been...
we discuss future population growth as a certainty, for example, without considering increases in birth defects, or sterility, or impotence to be possible, not to mention other health issues, in light of our chemical use...to me, these issues are a foregone conclusion...
to your example, other plants and animals have similar, and extensive, chemical needs that temperature may or may not affect, but that may have a great deal to do with their ability to survive, regardless of the temerature...
when reproduction or survivability of key, or many, plants or animals is chemically affected, little else will matter, including temperature...
Correct and all this talk of geoengineering, which moving plants is just a part, ignores the acidification of the ocean, which will continue to increase as long as we burn fuels, whether we put giant reflectors in space or not - and that will certainly result in the death of most forms of life in the ocean. If you haven't seen this video, check it out, it's amazing. Lightly touched on in the narration is that most of the oxygen we breathe comes from life in the sea. http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2009/10/you-cant-fish-and-not-have-hope.html
But maybe wait until after Christmas to watch it, it's pretty depressing!
The death of the Oceans and the warming all depicted & predicted in the sci fi B -movie of the early 1970's Soylent Green.
Those species that adapt, whether moved themselves or moved otherwise, will survive, or not. Adaptation is the kingpin of evolution and before that, survival.
How are you adaptation skills?
Animals are amazingly adaptable.
Those species that adapt, whether moved themselves or moved otherwise, will survive, or not. Adaptation is the kingpin of evolution and before that, survival.
How are your adaptation skills?
Animals are amazingly adaptable.
Life is remarkably adaptive. Species carry in their DNA the ability to turn certain sections of DNA on and off. This means that outliers in all sorts of plants and animals (probably not all species) may be able to adapt to a sudden climate change that their species hasn't seen for a million years. It's a latent "you can't knock me out" set of genes, ans some outliers of the species will turn on the rarely-used genes and repopulate their natural domain.
The pine tree has found the ability to become the Southern Pine and the Northern Pine since the last ice age, two closely related species with remarkably similar traits in wildly different climates.
Normally I'm not this optimistic about climate change effects, but in this case I have some hope. Merry Christmas.
And let's hope for happy new years, but recall that almost all species in the fossil record are extinct.
Those outliers diverged as the central population died.
In my area, the south western high desert, I saw this year the greatest concentration of rattlesnakes in my 35 years here.
I believe to be this concentrated they moved north about 25-35 miles in 35 years.